Monday, November 16, 2009

Stumpy Pencil, V2

I started this blog a year or two ago with a Photoshop brush for a stumpy pencil, my favorite drawing tool. Flat, soft and dark, crudely sharpened with a knife, a stumpy pencil lays down such an effortless line that it is a great tool for thinking on paper. My Photoshop effort became quite popular, and even in the long interval when I was not posting, I would still get feedback from people who had found it while searching for Photoshop tools.

Well it's still one of my most used brushes. I go to it first when I am sketching out ideas in Photoshop. I even use it for finishing when I want the final output to have a rougher look. I like it's speed and responsiveness. It's texture is convincing enough that I have actually used it to make revisions to actual scanned pencil drawings.

But, as with any digital tool that emulates a analog tool, it's never perfect. So I continue to tweak and refine and expand on it, evolving it and making it more effective with time. I present this new revised version to you today.

The tool has been expanded and refined. Let me break down the Tool set for you. It includes:

- Brush Tool: "Pencil: Round 3 pt." - A similar pencil, but with a different shaped Brush. Good for tightening up, or when the chiseled head of the Stumpy Pencil isn't working.

- Brush Tool: "Pencil: Graphite 30 pt." - This one has a gray color included to emulate the look of a soft graphite pencil.

- Eraser Tool: "Pencil: Stumpy 6 pt. Eraser" - an eraser which duplicates the feel and texture of the Stumpy Pencil, so you can erase an retain the textured quality of the line.

- Eraser Tool: "Pencil: Pink Tip Eraser" - Emulates the feel of an attached pencil eraser, with a slight grainy texture and medium flow. I wish I could make it so that it left little pink eraser shavings behind, but there's only so much Photoshop can do.

It seems it's been a while since you updated. But just wanted to say thanks for the great brushes! EXACTLY what i've been searching for for a long time. And hope you can get back into posting some more in the future. THANKS!

I had the same Tpl file problem. I'm on OSX.. I went to Applications Photoshop CS5 /Presets/Tools and dropped the file there.. restarted photoshop then when to Window scroll down to tool presets and they pop up there. They're not brushes.. just saved brush settings

Thanks so much! I've been getting more and more assignments calling for illustrations with a hand-drawn look that still have to be digitally created (i.e. - scanning and coloring a pencil drawing doesn't fit the bill). Can't wait to really dig in with these. They look absolutely perfect.

These are amazing! Thank you so much! I posted my first sketch here ( http://irkdesu.tumblr.com/post/6943590769/first-try-using-these-photoshop-brushes-i-am-in ) but it was just a first attempt. Next I plan to do something more grand.

I'd really like to use this, but I'm having two problems. 1) the Mac problem others have stated, and 2) I'm working with Photoshop Elements 6 - which doesn't seem to have the Presets/ Tools folder a previous poster mentioned. Anyone have any advice?

I'm not sure what you mean by the "Mac problem" unless you are referring to the Mac user that wasn't clear on how to unarchive a ZIP file (you double click on it). But I have never tried these tools with Elements and I would be very surprised if they worked as that is a different program.

Thanks for the link Natalie. I have also posted instructions on the blog itself. Look in the right column in the "Introduction" section and you will find directions on how to import these brushes in. I think i have to make a graphic of some kind to make it more obvious as many people miss them.

I'm stuck with a school computer with a lot of restrictions, and only have elements, I've downloaded the brushes, but the file type is incompatible, anyone know where I can find something similar but still compatible with Elements 7?

These are gorgeous-looking, but I'm afraid I'm in the same boat as a couple other people-- I have PS Elements, which doesn't allow for tool presets. The most information I've been able to gather is 'there are ways to hack it so you can use TPL in Elements', but I haven't seen anything else to back it up... If anyone anywhere knows a PS Elements-friendly way to get these to work, I'd love to know about it... a couple artists I know and admire swear by these.

I'm in the same PS Elements boat as some of the other users, so I can't load or use .tpl files.

It seems unfair to ask you to do more work after you've made these fantastic brushes available for free, but if you have the time could you possibly upload the .abr of the stumpy or round pencil? Even the first two alone would be amazing!

An .abr file is just the brush stamp texture. It doesn't save any of the brush presets that control how the brush is applied. As such, it won't look or behave like the brush should. I started with the "Chalk 36 pixels" brush, which is included with Photoshop, for my Stumpy Pencil, but there are a lot of specific presets that make it behave like a pencil.

God, this set is amazing. I was having a lot of trouble getting used to my tablet, but the round pencil setting is so close to how I actually draw on paper--I can barely tell the difference now! Thank you!

Hey thanks a lot for these brushes! I've been attempting to transition from paper to digital and have been struggling to create a good brush to mimic a pencil. I'll be giving your brushes a shot in the next few days, if you want to see the work I use them in I'll be uploading everything to my website (brandonpietras.com)and I'll make sure to reference this page.

Just a question: When I try to paint a lighter color over a dark area it doesn't seem to overlap. Which is a shame when you're trying to add highlights. Not sure if this is intentional or not. Still great! :)

Anon I am a bit confused. The brush, in it's default state, is completely opaque, which means it should obscure underlying artwork completely. You should be able to paint in highlights. Check in the upper toolbar area that the "Mode" is set to "Normal," "Opacity" is 100%. "Flow" is set for 75% so maybe set that to 100% to do what you are trying to do. Let me know how it works out.

It wouldn't produce great results, but you could apply any of the 'Style' effects on this blog to a vector layer or Smart Layer. So the "Watercolor" style or the pumpkin style would work for imported vector art.

thank you for this wonderful resource! Much like everyone else I have been struggling with learning to do digital sketches with the tablet since the brushes are very far from the texture of what I am used to with traditional pencils. I had a bit of a problem loading it but after googling how to do it exactly it became easy as pie. Thanks again!

I'm not familiar with that program, but there would be no way to automatically convert the brushes. However, If you understood the techniques of building a brush in Photoshop you could manually export the textures and set up the properties similarly in the other program. Not being familiar with Paint Tool SAI I don't know if it would support everything that Photoshop offers. I can say that I have had good results, although not identical, with brushes in the program "Procreate" for the iPad.

An Introduction

Welcome to Stumpy Pencil, my blog for digital art tools created by myself, for Photoshop and other art software. Feel free to download and use my tools, and in payment please send me Jpeg's or Png's of your artwork to be posted on the blog. Send submissions to mforan@monkeysuit.com. Be sure to include how you would like to be credited.

I work in animation, so by default I develop my tools to work at HD 1080p resolution, which is 1920x1080. Some tools may need to be tweaked to work at significantly higher or lower resolutions.

Here's a quick overview of how to install and use Tool Presets in Photoshop. I use Tool Presets instead of Brushes because you can also include presets for tools other than the brush, such as the eraser. You can also include a default color for a Tool Preset, when appropriate. Open the 'Tool Presets' palette from the menu Window. Import the .TPL file by selecting 'Load Tool Preset" from the menu on the 'Tool Presets' palette. Tool Presets may not be visible in the palette unless you have the appropriate tool selected. Choose the brush or eraser to see if your tools imported correctly. Presets will automatically import any Brush shapes needed. Some effects also have Style Presets. You can import the .ASL Style Presets in the same way as Tool Presets, but from the 'Styles' palette. I generally don't offer technical support, so you are on your own here. But feel free to post in the comments if you are having a problem and hopefully someone will help you out.